


That Love is All There Is

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Boring, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, humans!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:28:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The first time Theo sees Liam nothing happens, which is why he can’t even remember it.(Liam will confess to him that at first he couldn’t associate Theo’s face with a name even after being introduced a few times. So much for love at first sight.)





	That Love is All There Is

 

The first time Theo sees Liam nothing happens, which is why he can’t even remember it. _(Liam will confess to him that at first he couldn’t associate Theo’s face with a name even after being introduced a few times. So much for love at first sight.)_

He's just the new guy Tracey is dating and from her words he sounds like a dick. They see each other a few times, _hey, nice to meet you, I’m Tracey’s best friend, hi I’m Liam, how are you?_ and then it’s over. Tracey finds him overconfident and it doesn’t last a month between them. They part in good terms and Theo doesn’t remember Liam exists until a few months later, when  he happens to be with his friend Corey as he bumps into his good friend Mason, who also happens to be with Liam. They randomly spend the day together and an invite to an Halloween party is thrown.

They had fun, so why not.

Theo and Corey are the only ones that are not part of the giant group who threw the party, while Liam is clearly incredibly close to everyone, so there’s no reason for him to ignore all his friends and spend the night with the two random new guys, but that’s exactly what he does. It’s something he’ll always do, in the incoming months and years, put Theo and Corey above everyone else, even people he knew all his life. It’s weird, but it also makes sense. They just clicked and a single night it’s all it takes them to become inseparable. There’s no place on the bus when they come back and Theo sits on Liam’s legs for forty minutes. He stopped him from starting a fight at the club earlier, wrapping an arm around his chest and dragging him away. He listened to Liam telling the others about how he almost started a fight with an asshole who shoved him for no reason, and how he didn’t in the end because _‘he was there’_. Theo being _he_.

That is the first time they went out together.

A few weeks later, the three of them behave already like they’ve known each others for years. They spend every day together. Some of Liam’s friends are jealous about that and Theo can’t blame them.

When they stay home, they usually meet at Corey’s place. He has a large couch and they all lie close under a blanket to watch movies and chat. They play games and they eat at every hour of the day or the night. They drive to McDonald at 3a.m. and they hunt perfect settings for horror movies just wander around and pretend they’re in one. There’s that one time when Liam appears at Corey’s panicking because he thought he saw a porcupine on the road and they all run out to find him and bring him to safety. Theo loves that Liam is the kind of person who mistakes a big brown leaf for a porcupine by the way.

Corey is not a third wheel. He’s an essential part of their new, pathological friendship and they need him just as he needs them, but of course he’s not stupid. There’s something going on with Liam and Theo and if defining it exactly is impossible, everyone can see it. Corey will get up and cook something or whatever when Liam and Theo start wrestle on the couch.

They do that a lot.

Sometimes it starts with tickling, but more times than not it’s a stupid pretext, like the control over the remote, or the stealing of some pillow, but it always ends up there: Liam pressing his body against Theo’s, biting and scratching and pinning him down, while Theo fights back just as ruthlessly. They bleed sometimes, but they keep doing it and they both seek it with need.

Theo finds himself lying in bed thinking about Liam’s warm body against his, about his arms around him, a little too often to play stupid. He’s perfectly aware why they do it: they both need the contact and since they’re not really going to hug, that’s the closest they can get.

They flirt endlessly, mocking each other in their unique way, and Theo loves it. He wonders when they’re going to kiss. He imagines himself doing it first, just to shut Liam up, just like that.

Liam is not like him, he’s friendly and open and touchy and sometimes Theo wonders if that’s just his way of being, if it doesn’t mean anything, but deep down he knows it can’t be it. Deep down he doesn’t actually care: he’s going to kiss him one day and then whatever will happen will happen.

_(He never will.)_

It’s been months and everyone expects them to get together. Someone thinks they are already. Tracey even talked to Theo to assure him it was perfectly okay if he liked Liam, that she dated him for a few weeks and it was nothing, really. Times keeps going and people wonder why they’re not together yet. Theo always reminds his friends how Liam is really extrovert and touchy with everyone, how he could totally be like that with everyone and not just Theo, but that’s not it. Theo doesn’t know why Liam hasn’t kissed him yet, but that’s not what it’s stopping him from doing it first. His reason can’t be explained aloud, but it’s stronger than the fear of rejection. He could trust Liam’s feelings, but he can’t trust his own.

Sometimes Theo catches himself pretending, and even after months he can’t tell if his feelings for Liam are real or if he’s just making them up because he’d _like_ to feel them. Because it’d make sense, because if they were in a movie he’d love him. Sure, he loves to flirt with Liam and he _needs_ the physical contact with him, but he feels so empty and cold sometimes, like there’s ice inside him instead of the burning passion of love. Then again, Theo had a few quick relationships, but he never really _liked_ anyone, so maybe he just has no idea how it works. Maybe he’s just broken and feeling love is not for him.

Or maybe kissing Liam would melt all the ice and the atrophy and he just has to do it, but he _can’t_. Not if he’s not sure. He can’t do that to Liam, he can’t screw up everything by kissing him if he’s not sure. He can’t just goes ‘kidding, I don’t like you, it was just a test.’ But maybe Liam will kiss him first and then Theo will know how it feels and he’ll be free to have the reaction he wants.

Maybe Theo will just enjoy their flirting and stop trying to figure out his own feelings until Liam kisses him first.

_(Years later, Corey will show him the texts. “I just want to kiss him, but I don’t want to screw up everything if he doesn’t feel the way I do. If he just gave me a sign...but you know how he is.” Theo tried to be mad at the fact that Liam knew how he felt, that he knew he wanted to kiss Theo and he never did. But he can’t be mad, when he knows how he was. How he is. Unreadable, cold, impassive. Of course Liam couldn’t risk it.)_

Liam is possessive of him and not being sure about his feelings doesn’t stop Theo from enjoying it. He loves that when they go out dancing and someone comes close to hit on him, Liam just introduces himself as his boyfriend and send them away.

That one time he has a date with a guy, he immediately tells Liam. He knows he won’t show any sign of jealousy and that’s not what he tells himself for wanting Liam to know. He doesn’t remember what’s his excuse, it was bullshit anyway. Of course he wanted to make him jealous.

The guy is fine, but Theo keeps comparing him to Liam and there’s no match.

He gets drank one night and he’ll basks in the memory of hugging Liam for days to come. They weren’t even dancing, just standing there in the middle of the dance floor mumbling about _mine vertical bed_.

There’s that other time when they’re all out and Liam decides to go home super early, for no particular reason. Theo pretends he doesn’t care, but he can’t help but feeling that there’s no point anymore in that night. He hooks up with a guy and it feels petty.

It goes on like that for years but sometimes they just stop talking to each other for months.

_(Liam says that happened every time he was trying to get Theo out of his head. It’s during one of those pause that he met Hayden and went on a date with her, just to stop thinking about him. It didn’t work, he said.)_

Theo just graduated and he’s at a party with Corey and Tracey. He hasn’t seen or talked to Liam in almost a year when two arms wraps around his neck from behind. “Hey” A warm puff of hair tickles his cheek in the cold night and he smiles. “Hey.”

Nine months doesn’t count and everyone else disappears. They end up in the middle of nowhere, between canes and grass because they wanted to see who win the bet and if there was or was not water down there. Theo was a little drunk and he doesn’t even remember about the water. All he knows is that they stood there hugging for a ridiculous amount of time before climbing back and sitting on a cut trunk.

Theo lies down and rested his head on Liam’s legs, his fingers between his hair and the distant echo of music in the distance.

“Wouldn’t Hanna be jealous?” He asks after a while, because Liam got a girlfriend in the meantime.

_(Liam actually broke up with her after a few weeks, he’ll confess years later. He called her girlfriend in front of Theo, but they basically just started dating and it was always for the same reason. Always with no result.)_

Liam keep slowly caressing Theo’s hair.

“Nah, she knows we’re friends.” He says like it’s no big deal and of course it’s not, of course they’re friends, but Theo’s heart quickens in his chest as a storm of emotions silently shakes his guts. He’ll think about it and he’ll keep hearing Liam’s voicing as he said that for the rest of his life.  

They go back to the party eventually, join the others and end up wrestling on the grass. After that, it’s like they never stopped talking and it’s the three of them once again. That until Theo moves out. He doesn’t go _that_ far away, but he starts seeing Corey a little less, they meet together on the weekends, but it’s Liam the one who drives to his place every single day.

They spend Valentine together and they even buy a cake. Theo doesn’t think it’s weird, he stopped trying to figure his feelings for Liam out from a long time now. He finally resigned himself to the fact that they will never kiss, that they’re just a little more than friends but not enough. He stops fantasising about kissing him. Liam doesn’t date anyone else and he has no reason to be jealous. Nothing really happens, until Liam says it.

He’s sitting on Theo’s bed and he just blurts it out without warning, in the worst way he could have done it.

“I think I’m falling in love with you.” He says ( _and he lies, he has been in love with him for years now.)_

It’s late, it’s already late, but maybe if he just kissed him, instead of saying it. Maybe the kiss would have cleared out every doubt, in one way or another.

But he doesn’t and Theo is left with his heart thumping in his ears as he stutters excuses that break both his heart and Liam’s. He doesn’t spare him the fact that he waited a kiss from Liam for months after they met. He tells him in great detail just how much his timing sucks and he’s selfish enough to be quiet about his doubts on his feelings even at the time. He just goes with the easiest version of ‘I had a crush for you, but now it’s over. Now I see you just as a friend, it’s been too long.’

It’s not a blatant lie, because he’s still scared of kissing him and feeling nothing, but Liam has never been _just_ a friend, not for one second, ever.

Liam is not broken, he doesn’t need to think or pretend to care about people, and he reacts like the good person he is. Heartbroken, but he doesn’t want to lose Theo. He says he’s the most important person in his life and he doesn’t want to lose him, even if he can’t have him like that. He says he’ll always love him and that he can wait.

He says so many important things and Theo throws them all away. They last a few weeks after that and they don’t part in good terms. It’s what Theo wanted, what he tried to do. He’s been a dick, he’s been cold and he used Liam’s feelings and his honesty about it against him. He regrets it and he feels guilt about it, he feels like shit, like he deserves every bad thing, but he also knows he really doesn’t. He knows it was the right thing to do and it wasn’t selfish as Liam must have thought. It still sucks for Theo, but it worked in the end, because Liam didn’t get stuck with his love for him, he moved on and when they bump into each other again a few years later he’s with Hayden. They have been for a while now.

Of course Theo thinks _it should be me. It only worked this time because I helped him get over me. Because I was cruel on purpose._ Of course he’s jealous and of course he still doesn’t know if it’s real or if he’s just being the self centered dick he is, secretly wanting Liam to be helplessly in love with him forever.

It can’t be a coincidence that a part of him has been trying to convince him that it was all real, that he will always compare everyone to Liam and they will all lose, just after he lost him. He probably just likes the idea of feeling a tragic love that burns instead of the cold ice he’s used to. It’s been years and he’s still stuck in his mind trying to decipher his own feelings, long after they stopped matter. Liam is gone either way and Theo still doesn’t feel the burn. He _feels_ something, a scar on his heart where there was never a wound.

It’s bearable and it doesn’t sting because it’s just that, a scar on top of Liam and all the hours they spent laughing and teasing each other. A scar to cover that time Theo just stared at him from the other side of the table because his eyes were so fucking blue, and Liam stopped eating and snorted _what?_ and started mocking him and Theo never asked him how he couldn’t find the courage to kiss him when Theo looked at him like that.

That’s what burns a little.

Not all the things they did and the time spent together, the stares and the teasing, the jealousy and the laughs, the hugs and the mocking, the jokes they said and the deep long conversations in the middle of the night.

What hurts just a bit is the kiss they never shared and all the places they didn’t see together.

Everything that could have been if they were just a little braver.

Theo feels sad thinking about that. Most importantly, Theo _feels_.

 

 

That Love is all there is,  
Is all we know of Love;  
It is enough, the freight should be  
Proportioned to the groove.

[E.D.]

 

 


End file.
